When Tre Singleton announced his decision to transfer out of Northwestern a little over a week ago, it sent shock waves through the fan base.
It seemed likely that head coach Chris Collins would lose some players to the transfer portal this year, but not one of his prized possessions. Surely Northwestern's high retention rates would pull through and keep the highest ranked recruit in Wildcat history in the building.
Fast forward a little, and almost Collins' entire roster has entered the portal. Including Singleton, seven other players have decided to leave. Jake West, Angelo Ciaravino and Phoenix Gill are the remaining players who have announced their decision to return to the program, with Max Green's fate still undecided.
Now, the portal is open for business, and Collins can start to build his roster back up again. But that also means that all of his former players can start deciding their next steps.
Yesterday, the first domino to fall in the leaving part of the cycle became the first former 'Cat to announce his next destination. After much hang wringing from Northwestern fans and reporters -- including myself -- about whether he'd head to Purdue or Indiana, Singleton is going out of conference to the Iowa State Cyclones.
That's objectively good news for Collins and co., who are likely ok with the reality of losing Singleton at this point, but certainly didn't want to have to watch him develop in the Big Ten.
For Singleton, the move makes sense. He's coming off an uncompetitive season in Evanston that was frustrating for everyone involved. Now, he gets to continue developing at a program that is regularly much more competitive than Northwestern. He's also likely getting paid more money to do so.
Cyclone head coach T.J. Otzelberger will be tasked with unlocking Singleton's offensive game and utilizing him correctly on the defensive end. Singleton was an above average defender with the 'Cats, but he left something to be desired on offense as a freshman.
The main thing is that Singleton has to shoot the ball better than 17%. As a player with limited dribble-drive ability and poor handles on the exterior, Singleton is very one-dimensional as a post-move dependent player. If he could force defenses to respect his outside shot even just a little, it could really help him space out the floor. In year one, as long as he wasn't down by the basket, he wasn't really a threat to do much of anything.
For the Wildcats, losing Singleton was not ideal, but they did manage to keep West in the fold. Arguably, the point guard looked more promising in his freshman campaign than Singleton did. The latter will certainly get better at Iowa State, but Northwestern should be able to survive this, and it really helps that he won't be coming back to Evanston in conference play.